Shares in bellwether mortgage real-estate investment trust Annaly Capital Management (NLY) are up 3.7% so far this morning, looking to close above the $11 mark for the first time since November, after Annaly reported 4th-quarter core earnings of $0.35 per share, beating Street estimates, and a book value of $12.13, down 4.5% from the previous quarter.

“We are encouraged by the reduced uncertainty in the fixed income markets with the introduction of monetary policy tapering,” said Wellington Denahan, Annaly’s chairman and CEO, in a statement. “Our commercial assets continue to build momentum, with commercial investments now representing 14% of our stockholders’ equity. The lower leverage stance permits us to be opportunistic with capital deployment allowing us to strengthen earnings in future periods.”

Here’s Nomura‘s first take:

Overall, we are impressed by NLY’s performance this quarter. Despite taking a more conservative stance this quarter (relative to peers), lowering leverage and increasing swap positions, NLY delivered positive interest income growth (+1.9% YoY) for the first time since 1Q12. As expected, book value moved lower again this quarter, but by a smaller magnitude relative to peers (-4.5% QoQ compared to -5.3% / -8.5% at AGNC / CYS).

Here’s FBR Capital Markets, reiterating its Market Perform rating:

The primary driver of the beat versus our estimate came on the back of lower premium amortization as the CPR fell to 7%, substantially lower than last quarter’s 13%. This has been the predominant trend with nearly all mREITs this quarter as refinance activity slowed as interest rates moved higher. While this may be considered somewhat “one-time” in nature as the CPR was likely artificially low this quarter, investors have given credit to other names for EPS beats on lower premium amortization, so we would expect this to be the case for Annaly as well…. We had been modestly cautious around the book value print as other agency names with larger fixed rate exposure all had worse than expected book value marks this quarter.

JMP Securities reiterated its Market Perform rating. More from JMP:

The key driver in the sequential earnings improvement was a drop in prepayment speed (CPR) to 7% from 13% in 3Q, which caused premium amortization to decline to just $30.7M from $201.9M in 3Q. We estimate, however, that as much as $50M of this decline or about $0.05 per share could be considered a one-time “catchup” adjustment, which if correct would lower run-rate core EPS to about $0.28, but still above the 4Q consensus estimate.

Credit Suisse today raised its 2014 and 2015 core EPS estimates for NLY to $1.25 (from $1.07) and $1.25 (from $1.12) to reflect Annaly’s better-than-expected net interest spread in fourth quarter, and also established a 2016 estimate of $1.05. ”Given our new earnings estimates we expect that Annaly’s dividend should be stable in the coming quarters,” CS wrote.